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social media and law enforcement

Should Prisoners Have Access to Social Networks?

by Mike Vallez on December 5, 2010

Social Media in Prison

Personally, I feel if you are in prison you should lose the right to have access to social media, social networking, and people in general. If you have made it to a prison cell you have been convicted of a crime by a judge or jury, thus limiting your rights. Kind of like being a kid who gets in trouble in kindergarten or grade school and gets a time out. The kids in time out aren’t watching TV, playing video games, talking to other kids or updating their status on their Facebook pages. According to a Police One article an inmate named Justin L. Walker has pictures of him smoking a bong, licking a shiv (homemade prison knife), and holding a bottle of booze (other inmate holding a bag of weed). How is this possible? While these may not be 100% authentic (weed & booze), the flame is as well as the picture of the shiv.

social media and law enforcementsocial media and law enforcement

The above pictures were easy to find through a search on Facebook for this guy. Besides stupidity for 1) taking pictures of potential criminal activities, 2) posting them on Facebook profile or 3) having someone else post on Facebook profile, why does this guy have access to Facebook, a cell phone or camera? Bottom line, this guy killed a Sheriff in Oklahoma and he has numerous other criminal charges and should not have the freedom to do this. Do we want people like this on Facebook? Do you want this guy friending your child, girlfriend, mother? I don’t. The obvious security risks posed by an inmate having access to communicate on a social network are dangerous. While law enforcement has been slow to deal with social media, apparently, the correctional system should be working on plans to prevent inmates from participating in this type of communication. What do you think? MV

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What is Privacy? 5 Common Sense Tips While Social Networking….

by Mike Vallez on June 4, 2010

social media five-o

What exactly is considered private when it comes to social media and social networking? Since becoming involved in social media about a year and a half ago I have been a little astonished at what people share about themselves. MySpace has been the social networking website where both men and woman pushed the limits on how much skin is showed in uploaded pic’s. Seems like Facebook has surpassed MySpace with lack of clothing pic’s due to the shear number of users 465,564,340 (via http://www.checkfacebook.com/) and the numerous men and women in their undies, bikinis, or less.

I am not a prude and am not against girl’s in bikinis (not into guys in underwear), but there seems to be a lack of modesty and forethought when it comes to information (pics, videos, crazy status updates) being placed on social networking sites. Once information is placed on the web, you should assume it will live on the web forever, yes forever. People can save any images or text with a simple right click of a mouse and don’t assume because your privacy settings are set on Facebook or other social networking sites that any of your risque information won’t show up on the web (so called friends can share your information).

Another security/privacy issue to be considered while participating in social media/social networking is GPS location services. Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and most other social networking sites allow you to provide your GPS location. As a retired police officer I do not think this is the best of ideas for personal security reasons. There are websites like pleaserobme.com that are placing your GPS locations on their website once caught off the web from status updates along with the fact that you are not home encouraging criminal activity or at your residence i.e: burglary because you are most likely not at home.

Below are 5 common sense tips on how to prevent from unwanted privacy intrusions:

1) Don’t share naked pictures of yourself unless you are ready for the consequences – Hmm, what will my parents or kids think?
2) Don’t put anything into a status update you don’t want recirculated on the web – My boss John Doe is a #$%^.
3) Ladies turn off your GPS notifications from all social networking sites so you are not advertising that you are alone at a bar at 2am – There are creepers on the web you know.
4) Don’t always trust a picture of an individual on a social networking site because they are attractive – Things are not always as they appear.
5) Don’t list your cell phone number on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social networking website if you don’t want your privacy invaded – Ladies really, weirdos will call you.

As social media continues to change our culture our definition of privacy seems to also be changing. What was private 5 years ago is now a profile picture on Facebook or a status update on Twitter that potentially millions of people can see. I am not throwing rocks from my glass house as I have violated my own common sense rules a time or two, but consider your privacy current or future when participating in social media and social networking sites. Mike Vallez

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The Kentucky State Police Are Finding Success Using Social Media

by Mike Vallez on June 2, 2010

social media and law enforcement

I love to read a news article on the web that highlights a law enforcement agency that is using social media and being successful at it. Some may say social media success for law enforcement has to be measured by arrests, crimes prevented or some numerical value. However, successful use of social media for law enforcement is more of a “loss leader.” If an agency broadens their audience, informs their constituents, and yes ultimately prevents crime then they should consider social media a valuable communication tool. One such agency that is rocking social media is the Kentucky State Police.

The Kentucky State Police are using social media and have found success in doing so. Unlike most law enforcement agencies someone at the Kentucky State Police found value in communicating through social media. They have a successful Facebook fan page which has just about 17,000 people who like it (including me). They post everything from crime prevention tips, wanted people pic’s, criminal activity information, and more to their Facebook Fan Page. The Kentucky State Police also use Twitter to push out their message. A quick check of their website shows that the Kentucky State police prominently display their Facebook fan page feed and Twitter link for web users to follow them on those social networking sites.

While law enforcement is still finding out how to implement social media some agencies such as the Kentucky State Police have realized the value in communicating through social networking websites. Hopefully, over the next year law enforcement will realize the low cost big messaging benefit that is possible by using social media. Mike Vallez

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US Gov’t Pro Social Media, Law Enforcement Asleep At The Wheel!

by Mike Vallez on March 29, 2010

The US Department of State has jumped into Facebook amid a growing number of federal agencies that are doing the same. Other federal agencies involved in social media are the National Security Agency, US Army, US Navy, US Coast Guard, The White House, and many others. The federal government is clearly becoming a leader in communicating their message through “social networking” sites. But is the federal government setting the standard on how to be involved in “social media?” How about from a national security perspective? There are not a lot of private national security companies for obvious reasons. However, law enforcement is in the business of national security particularly post 09/11. So why is law enforcement so slow to respond to the obvious?

The obvious is that social networking sites offer law enforcement a new way to communicate to their consumers, constituents, and others. The “others” category is a group of people who transcend the the geographical area of a law enforcement agency and consist of web users, the world wide web. Typically law enforcement only communicated to their local citizens by television, news paper, or radio, which was geographically limiting. The web allows for a much broader audience even an international audience. Additionally, it must be assumed that a certain percentage of a law enforcement agencies local constituents are also involved in social networking sites. But, why would a law enforcement agency care to broadcast information to anyone other than their local citizens?

Because prior to the “blow up” of social networking sites in the last few years the web was primarily a reference tool to gather information and was not used as much for “social” online communication. The change in culture that has occurred is epic and is not a fade. People are consuming news from Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and other websites that were not typical news outlets, but are now. We all can agree that how people are accessing information has changed. A quick stat that supports this, “more than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week” on Facebook (Facebook Statistics). It is no wonder the federal government is getting on board with social media. By setting up communication channels on social networking sites they are to reaching out to a growing number of people who are gathering information from places like Facebook and Twitter and not from newspapers or television.

Hopefully law enforcement will see the value in getting their message out through social networking sites. Be it a press release, wanted person information, missing person information, crime prevention information and so on. The US government has invested in communication through social networking sites, specifically from a national security perspective maybe law enforcement will take this cue and get involved as well. Just to be fair, not each and every law enforcement agency is oblivious to using social networking sites. There are some using social networking sites to further their communication, however, in general law enforcement has not overwhelmingly jumped into the conversation just yet. Mike Vallez

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Banning Sex Offenders From Facebook, Twitter, Long Overdue!

by Mike Vallez on March 12, 2010

A recent article from Southern California Public Radio touts a couple of California state law makers that are attempting to pass a law to make it illegal for sex offenders to use social networking sites that children, kids, teens may frequent. I applaud Assemblywoman Norma Torres for getting legs on this topic, but reading this article leaves me wanting more.

Banning “sex offenders” from Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites seems like common sense. If we are going to pass laws that prohibit a convicted sex offender from coming within X amount of feet from children then why not have the same standards for social networking sites for these scarlet letter criminals? In my opinion it is much easier for a sexual predator to manipulate a child/young adult online from the privacy of their own home, where no one can see their activities. Sexual predators use social networking sites on a regular basis (pedophiles online ) to cultivate leads for offline conversion of their illegal sexual activities. While not all “creeps” on Facebook are sexual predators, seems like a no brainer to enact a law that requires sex offenders to register with all social networking sites as sexual predators.

I know what your are thinking, you are thinking “what if the sexual predator” makes up a false name? Yes, they could surely do this and it would be hard to enforce. In fact even if the proposed legislation passes, how is it going to be enforced? As stated in the article by the Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters “it would be a deterrent for registered sex offenders.” That is true, but include the registration or “no fly social networking list” for sexual predators and change the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony. For heavens sake, a misdemeanor for stalking a child or young adult to rape or worse kill, quite unbelievable. The enforcement of sexual predators not to violate the original laws of a sexual predator registration (do not go X feet from children, etc) is also difficult to enforce. In fact most laws are only enforced in a reactionary manner. However, the more provisions we can place on sexual predators to prevent them from making more victims from our children the better.

Parents, the best advice I can give you as a former law enforcement officer, now social media strategist is to keep tabs on your kids social networking. Know who they are communicating with, what is on their status update threads (read over their status updates), and ask them where they are going, who with, where did you meet them if it is someone you have not heard them mention before. Social media is changing our world and social networks are filled with criminals who are going to take advantage of opportunities. Mike Vallez

http://www.michaelvallez.com

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Department of Defense social media policy change on social media Five-O

DoD Takes On Social Media | Gets All Branches Under One Policy

by Mike Vallez on March 5, 2010

The Department of Defense has implemented an encompassing “Responsible and Effective Use
of Internet-based Capabilities Policy” last week to get everyone under their large umbrella on the same “social networking” use page (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Pentagon-Loosens-Reins-Over-Use-of-Facebook-Twitter-Web-20-Apps-448094/). As one could imagine the DoD was going to have to do something sooner than later to get the different organizations under their jurisdiction under the same policy.

The trouble began last year when the US Army banned the use of several “social networking” sites for their organization. The US Marines followed up with a much harsher version as I wrote about in August of last year “Marines Ban Social Media, But Can They.” The Marines banned the use of all “social networking” sites from all US Marine network computers.

The DoD is the protector of the United States of America and the job involves at most times a high level of secrecy and security around operations, procedures, and intelligence. Naturally, the banning of “social media” by the various organizations in the DoD was as a precautionary measure to protect national security, i.e. the United States. But, apparently after some study and consideration the DoD feels comfortable enough to allow use of “social networking” sites by their massive employee base.

Could the DoD successfully, have banned social media? Perhaps, but policing this would be a very difficult process, one that might take up an inordinate amount of time and take away from the more important mission of protecting the this country. The policy allows for use of “social networking” sites, wiki’s, etc, but there is some wording that allows the DoD to put the “kabash” on” social networking” if necessary. The cause for revoking “social networking” access is mostly common sense based on abuse or “bandwidth” issues.

I applaud the DoD for stepping up and taking the “social media” bull by the horns. An organization this large, especially one that deals in national security may have just set the standard for “social networking” use for the rest of the government and private sector. It ought to be interesting to see how other agencies, corporations, and other government entities deal with the same issue, people using “social networking sites” at work. MFV

http://michaelvallez.com

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ToysRUs Great Customer Service | Social Media Squander

by Mike Vallez on January 29, 2010

During the Christmas shopping season my wife and I had a tremendous customer service experience at ToysRUs in Wesley Chapel, Florida. No offense ToysRUs staff reading this, but we ended up at this stores electronics department after coming up short at Best Buy. We had intended on going to ToysRUs to grab some board games, but never really thought of purchasing any electronics at this store.

After grabbing the board games we needed we headed over to the checkout line, until my wife mentioned something about checking out there electronics. I almost brushed this off, but anytime I can check out electronics anywhere I am game. The breadth of electronics selection obviously is not up to par with Best Buy or hhgregg. But the electronics they do sell are reasonably priced. They had a small selection of digital cameras, a nicer selection of iPod compatible radios (better than Best Buy), and a respectable selection of iPod’s. As we wandered around the counters we almost left, but Trevor a customer service fellow asked if we needed help. That little outward offer by this guy to a couple that had no intention on spending any cash on electronics at ToysRUs was the beginning of a great shopping experience.

Trevor was very knowledgeable of the cameras and he helped us get a 12.1 mega pixel camera for our daughter at a magnificent price, less than $100.00. We were unable to match this at Best Buy (sorry, not trying to pick on Best Buy, just saying). Trevor continued to ask if we needed anything else and we were in the market for an iPod Touch. Really, I had no hope of purchasing an iPod Touch at ToysRUs due to the Apple price controls. But, low and behold ToysRUs offered us a discount, not on the iPod Touch, but off the total price of our purchase and the discount was a ToysRUs gift card. That cemented the deal. Another customer service woman (forgot her name, sorry) helped us find a wonderful iPod Touch radio that also was on sale and she was personally knowledgeable of. My wife and I walked out of ToysRUs spending almost $400 with an iPod Touch, a nice digital camera, and an iPod Touch alarm clock radio, with a $25 gift card as well.

My first thought as a social media nut is to tell the world. As you can see I am a little late at that, but non the less I am telling the story. I did however, reach out to ToysRUs through corporate through an email, but got no response. I then scoured their website for any signs of social media (Facebook, Twitter, you know), but found nothing. A check of Alexa.com for ToysRUs shows their website to be the 310th most popular website in the United States, yet no signs of social media efforts. But hold on, ToysRUs does have a robust Facebook Fan Page with almost half a million fans. Weird that the ToysRUs company website does not have the Facebook icon or any mention of Facebook on their website or in any of the commercials I have seen for this toy store giant.

ToysRUs appears to be a company that gets it! When I mean gets it, they have customer service representatives that go out of their way to help customers, which in this day and age is hard to find. But, the squandered opportunity comes from not advertising their social media involvement, i.e. their Facebook Fan Page. Maybe they would have 1.5 million fans instead and increased revenue. A check of Alexa.com a website rating company showed the ToysRUs website to be the 310th most popular website in the United States, which means this is an extremely busy website, again no signs of social media. By not advertising their social media involvement they are probably missing out on thousands if not hundreds of thousands of customer loyalty followers.

My suggestion for ToysRUs is to clearly identify they are on Facebook and consider providing customer service on Twitter. They have a large customer base in stay at home mothers, work mothers, and stay at home fathers who probably spend hours a day on the web. By meeting their customers on Facebook and Twitter they have a huge opportunity to increase their brand and customer loyalty. I am a fan of ToysRUs and will continue to look for electronics at this store before heading to Best Buy, at least at times. CM

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Facebook Fan Page Basics-101!

by Mike Vallez on December 2, 2009

Facebook is the largest social media community in the world! In fact, I am sure most of you have heard that Facebook would be the third most populated country, if it were a country. So if you are a business, law enforcement agency, or anyone selling anything you should have a Faceboo Fan Page. Just to give you one more statistic if you’re not yet buying in. Facebook had just under 130,000,000 million unique visits for October 2009 and 2.5 billion visits overall. That last stat was “billions.” One last reason to set up your Facebook Fan Page is it is FREE, yep other than the time it takes to set it up initially and provide status updates, there is no cost.

First thing you will need to do is set up a Facebook personal profile account. Unfortunately Facebook at this time requires all Fan Pages to be attached to a personal profile. I suggest if you set up an empty or fake profile to attach your Fan Page to. A fake or empty profile is not one anyone will be using other than for your Fan Page. Remember to make the name for the personal account real enough and you will need a valid email address.

Now that you have your Facebook personal profile set up you click on help and search “how to create a Fan Page.”
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You will have to go through and make some choices that best fit your company, business, brand, cause, etc. Setting up your Fan Page as a website is one of the easiest ways to create a Fan Page especially if you have a website (guessing most do). But there are plenty of other choices to choose to craft your Fan Page. Be sure to put in as much relevant information in all the areas you can to adequately explain “what” your page is about “what” you offer for services and or “what” your product is about. If you are promoting a cause then be clear with purpose, how people can get involved, and contact information. Be sure to add your website address, pictures of your business, events, activities (off line), and what ever else you want to jazz up your Fan Page. If you want to take your Fan Page to the next level you can also have a customized side bar made by twitterimage.com.

Spread the word! If you have or know anyone with a large Facebook following I suggest you as them to join your Fan Page and have them use their account to send messages to their followers to join your Fan Page. You may also want to consider advertising on Facebook. The advertising on Facebook is very targeted, I mean very targeted. You can target age, male/female, occupation, location, and more. A little inspiration. I have about 2400 friends on my Facebook profile and I have used this following to jump start a Fan Page I manage (Tampa Bay Crusader). By me suggesting followers from my personal account I have grown the Tampa Bay Crusader Facebook Fan Page to 389 followers in just 4 weeks. Not bad and results may vary, but with the information in this article you should be able to get your Facebook Fan Page up and running.

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Social Media Sites Trying To Get Rid Of Sex Offenders!

by Mike Vallez on December 1, 2009

Sex offenders are being purged from social media sites due to new laws, “Amen.” Sex offenders being banned from social media sites is not a new tactic, but due to recent state laws in several states this process has been streamlined. There is also a national law under construction by the US Justice Department to require a national email registry for sex offenders. While this is an admirable effort on part of the social media giants Facebook and MySpace, there is much more work to be done.

MySpace has been the most aggressive in seeking and banning registered sex offenders from their website. FaceBook has also been diligent in launching identified sex offenders from their social media community. But what about unidentified sex offenders? What about dishonest sex offenders? Social media websites can only do so much based on the information they have, information they do not have they cannot act on.

I applaud the efforts by Facebook and MySpace, what about Twitter, FriendFeed, Friendster, Ning, and so on. Sex offenders are not rehabilitated when banned from Facebook or MySpace, they merely migrate to other websites that are not yet working to ban sex offenders. There is also a disparity in comparison to the numbers of users and banned sex offenders. Facebook registered just shy of 130,000,00 unique visitors for October 2009 and MySpace a little less than 50,000,000 unique visitors during this same time. In comparison Facebook has only banned 2,782 identified sex offenders and MySpace 1,796 as of this year. Statistically speaking the numbers don’t match up with the amount of people using both these social media sites.

So what about the dishonest sex offenders, yea, I know that sounds unlikely (insert sarcasm here)? Sex offenders do not always register for regular physical monitoring that almost all states require, let alone registering for email monitoring. They could also lie! Yes, opening a new account on any social media website requires an active email that is it. Unless the US government allows for social media websites to scrub emails for actual identification of the user then banning sex offenders based on their honesty is like the kid putting his finger in the leaking dike.

Being aware of your surroundings is the best way to prevent from becoming a victim in real life, off the grid. This same strategy should be used when online and communicating with others on social media websites. Tell your wife, children, and friends to be careful for users who ask funky sexual questions, which at first may not seem weird. But, take into consideration that if you are being sought out by someone in a social media site and you feel uncomfortable, then let your intuition reign and ban the person. Another powerful feature on all social media websites is you can report any user for inappropriate use. Don’t do this willy nilly, do this only if you are truly a victim of a weirdo.

Social media websites that are making an effort to ban identified sex offenders is a noble cause, but this attempt is a drop in the bucket. The current efforts based on the amount of users could be in my view window dressing. I wonder if any of the social media sites have actually thought about hiring prior law enforcement to help in they’re policing of their sites. The day is coming where crime will increase in social media communities. I hope the social media heavy weights are preparing for the problems that come when a lot of people get together. Remember criminals are mostly opportunistic, so be careful, use common sense and prevent from becoming an online victim.

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Facebook | How Police Can Use As A Social Media Tool

by Mike Vallez on November 19, 2009

Facebook is an extremely powerful social media community that has become larger than I am sure many Facebook executives would admit they thought was possible. Facebook had over 2.5 billion visits last month (10/2009), which is quite stunning. There are millions of people visiting Facebook billions of times a month to communicate with each other, but what is mostly missing from Facebook? A strong law enforcement presence.

A Facebook Fan Page is extremely easy to set up and run on a daily basis. A key point to remember is you should never set up your business (law enforcement agency) as a personal account or group. Both are tied to a person and both are in violation of Facebook rules, which could cause the accounts to be disabled. Here is the 411 on how to set up a Facebook Fan Page the right way:

1) Establish a personal account- right now this is the only way to create a Fan Page, I suggest you make this a new account not belonging to anyone in particular with the sole purpose of being the placeholder for the Fan Page.

2) Choose type of Fan Page-Website choice will allow you to put in the basic information about your Police Department which is a good choice since you are communicating on the web and you should have a website to promote.

3) Add Your Image- You will need a graphic to represent your brand or department, which most times you will already have again if you already have a web presence.

4) Publish-Once have your image uploaded, your content in place (website url, description of department, mission statement, etc) then you will publish your page. Once published you can begin to publish information on your wall (status box).

But, what do I want to publish to my Facebook Fan Page? Again, go back to the stunning statistic above, 2.5 billion visits in October 2009. You can communicate through posts to your wall a variety of important police information:

1) Crime prevention tips
2) Wanted person pictures
3) Videos from robberies or other crimes
4) Information about department/city activities
5) Community news relevant to the police departments mission
6) Missing persons
7) Blog posts if you have a blog, if you don’t start one

Another tip I suggest is to target followers geographically through the search function on Facebook to try to obtain followers (friends) in your community. Then once you have a decent following of local followers for your community follow their followers. This can be done very easy and the end game is to obtain as many local followers as you can to get your message out. With the large amount of people using Facebook I will almost guarantee that every law enforcement jurisdiction has plenty of Facebook users. I will say it again, police have an opportunity to communicate in “real time” with their citizens, which is a huge communication shift. If you have any questions on how to set up a Facebook Fan Page, contact me at mike@michaelvallez.com .

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